Religious Disagreement and Pluralism

This volume explores many issues at the intersection of the epistemology of disagreement and religious epistemology. Epistemological questions about the significance of disagreement have advanced in concert with broader developments in social epistemology concerning testimony, the nature of expertise and epistemic authority, the role of institutions, group belief, and epistemic injustice, among others. During this period, related issues in the epistemology of religion have re-emerged as worthy of new consideration, and available to be situated with new conceptual tools. Does disagreement between, and within, religions, challenge the rationality of religious commitment? How should religious adherents think about exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist frameworks as applied to religious truth, or to matters of salvation or redemption? This volume engages in careful reflection on religious diversity and disagreement, offering ways to balance epistemic humility with personal conviction. Recognizing the place of religious differences in our social lives, it provides renewed efforts at how best to think about truths concerning religion.

Author(s):  
Torun Reite ◽  
Francis Badiang Oloko ◽  
Manuel Armando Guissemo

Inspired by recent epistemological and ontological debates aimed at unsettling and reshaping conceptions of language, this essay discusses how mainstream sociolinguistics offers notions meaningful for studying contexts of the South. Based on empirical studies of youth in two African cities, Yaoundé in Cameroon and Maputo in Mozambique, the essay engages with “fluid modernity” and “enregisterment” to unravel the role that fluid multilingual practices play in the social lives of urban youth. The empirically grounded theoretical discussion shows how recent epistemologies and ontologies offer inroads to more pluriversal knowledge production. The essay foregrounds: i) the role of language in the sociopolitical battles of control over resources, and ii) speakers’ reflexivity and metapragmatic awareness of register formations of fluid multilingual practices. Moreover, it shows how bundles of localized meanings construct belongings and counterhegemonic discourses, as well as demonstrating speakers’ differential valuations and perceptions of boundaries and transgressions across social space.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ali Fakhari ◽  
Mostafa Farahbakhsh ◽  
Elham Davtalab Esmaeili ◽  
Hosein Azizi

Abstract Background A detailed community-level understanding of socioeconomic status (SES) and sociocultural status (SCS) of suicides and suicide attempters (SAs) in a prospective design could have significant implications for policymakers at the local prevention and treatment levels. The effect of SCS and SES on SAs is poorly understood and investigated in Iran. The present study aimed to investigate the incidence, trend, and role of SES and SCS on suicide and SAs. Methods A longitudinal study was conducted based on the registry for SAs in Malekan County, Iran, from 2015 to 2018. Demographic characteristics, SES, SCS, incidence rates, and predictors of suicidal behaviors were measured via structured instruments. Simple and multiple logistic regressions were used to estimate crude and adjusted odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Results A total of 853 SAs (32 suicides and 821 attempts) were identified during the study. Trend analysis revealed that the suicide rate significantly decreased from 2014 (10.28) to 2018 (1.75) per 100,000. In the final multiple variable models, age (26–40), male sex, unemployment, antisocial activities, history of SA, hanging method, and season (spring) increased the suicide risk while religious commitment had protective effects on suicide. Conclusions Our findings indicated that demographic characteristics, low SES, and SCS are associated with suicide. In this county, trend of suicide and SA were decreased from 2014 to 2018. This study findings highlight the need to consider a wide range of contextual variables, socio-demographic, SES, and SCS in suicide prevention strategies. Improving inter-sectoral collaborations and policymakers’ attitudes are imperative for SA reduction.


Episteme ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Mikkel Gerken ◽  
Jesper Kallestrup ◽  
Klemens Kappel ◽  
Duncan Pritchard

The articles in this special issue were selected from the 2010 Episteme conference, “Cognitive Ecology: The Role of the Concept of Knowledge in Our Social Cognitive Ecology”, which took place at the University of Edinburgh in June 2010. The overarching purpose of the conference was to explore our epistemic concepts – and the concept of knowledge in particular – from the perspective offered by a social cognitive ecology.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-217
Author(s):  
Wiktor Razmus ◽  
Beata Zarzycka

Past research links a decrease in religiosity with the development of marketing and, in particular, with the growing role of brands in consumers’ lives. Building on James's (1920) theory of the self, we propose that focusing on brands as a strategy for self-expression (brand engagement in self-concept; BESC) does not exclude religious commitment and may even be related with higher levels of religious commitment. We also suggest that this relationship is moderated by grandiose narcissism. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 306 individuals in a cross-sectional study. The findings provide evidence that BESC is positively related to religious commitment and the higher an individual’s narcissism is, the stronger the positive relationship between BESC and religious commitment. These findings suggest that using brands as a strategy for self-expression is not a substitute for religious commitment.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-131
Author(s):  
Md Mahfuzar Rahman ◽  
AK Mahbubul Hoque

Transformative learning is a process of learning that individuals to changes their critically assumptions and beliefs and consciously making and implementing plans that bring about new ways. It is a fundamentally rational and analytical process. It is also a process of getting beyond gaining factual knowledge alone to instead become learns in some meaningful way. It involves questioning assumptions, beliefs and values, and considering multiple points of view, while always seeking to verify reasoning. This learning is to make interpretations from the person's own beliefs, judgments and feelings and consciously define the meaning of the experience1 or a process of learning that creates a substantial change in the habits, ideas and/or outlook of an individual. This article highlights concept and theories that deals with the paradigm shift of changes needed among adult learners, role of educators and learners towards development of individual and social lives in addition to existing perspective (traditional) of teaching & learning practice. Practices of transformative learning vision and process in adult education have the scope to bring improved critical thinking and a way of changing life style.Anwer Khan Modern Medical College Journal Vol. 8, No. 2: Jul 2017, P 128-131


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 299-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Dana Lynn ◽  
Jason Joseph Paris ◽  
Cheryl Anne Frye ◽  
Lawrence M. Schell

Religious-commitment signaling is thought to indicate willingness to cooperate with a religious group. It follows that a desire to signal affiliation and reap concomitant benefits would lend itself to acting in socially desirable ways. Success or failure in such areas, especially where there is conscious intent, should correspond to proximal indicators of well-being, such as psychosocial or biological stress. To test this model, we assessed religious-commitment signaling and socially desirable responding among a sample of Pentecostals with respect to salivary biomarkers of stress and arousal. Results indicate that cortisol levels on worship and non-worship days were significantly influenced by religious-commitment signaling when moderated by impression management, a conscious form of socially desirable responding. No significant influences on salivary alpha-amylase were detected. These findings are important for understanding how religious-commitment signaling mechanisms may influence stress response when moderated by socially desirable responding and the role of communal orientation to psychosocial health.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-411
Author(s):  
Steve Fuller

Abstract William Lynch has provided an informed and probing critique of my embrace of the post-truth condition, which he understands correctly as an extension of the normative project of social epistemology. This article roughly tracks the order of Lynch’s paper, beginning with the vexed role of the ‘normative’ in Science and Technology Studies, which originally triggered my version of social epistemology 35 years ago and has been guided by the field’s ‘symmetry principle’. Here the pejorative use of ‘populism’ to mean democracy is highlighted as a failure of symmetry. Finally, after rejecting Lynch’s appeal to a hybrid Marxian–Darwinism, Carl Schmitt and Thomas Hobbes are contrasted en route to what I have called ‘quantum epistemology’.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-161
Author(s):  
Fernanda Neubauer ◽  
Michael J. Schaefer

We discuss the important role of the feminist critique in bringing awareness to gender, childhood, and identity research, and in giving voice to the perspectives of underrepresented groups. As a case study of ancient social lives and gender, we discuss a range of Marajoara identity markers interpreted through the study of ceramic tangas (female pubic coverings) from Marajó Island in the Brazilian Amazon (A.D. 400-1400). There, tangas were made and used by women as a material representation of social position, gender, and individual identity. We argue that identity constitutes a fundamentally important aspect of archaeological research, and that the strongest case studies in identity are those that encompass a variety of gendered inferences to understand social lives of the past.


Author(s):  
John Danaher

Human societies have, historically, undergone a number of moral revolutions. Some of these have been precipitated by technological changes. Will the integration of robots into our social lives precipitate a new moral revolution? In this keynote, I will look at the history of moral revolutions and the role of techno-social change in facilitating those revolutions. I will examine the structural properties of human moral systems and how those properties might be affected by social robots. I will argue that much of our current social morality is agency-centric and that social robots, as non-standard agents, will disrupt that model.


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